Why is recycling important? You asked Google – here’s the answer – Adam Vaughan – the guardian

“Recycling is not about rubbish: it’s valuable commodities you’re chucking in your wheelie bin, according to sustainability expert Marcus Gover, not rubbish. “It feels like you are disposing of things, but really the things we’re putting out in the bin are raw materials and commodities: they’re plastic and paper, steel and aluminium, and they’re all quite valuable,” says Gover, a director at the British waste agency Wrap. “Aluminium is worth somewhere between £800 to £1,000 a tonne. Old Guardians [newspapers] are worth about £80 a tonne. It’s not rubbish in any way.” Myths persist about recycling, with some people still claiming that material in recycling bins is secretly sent to landfill rather than recycled and made into new products. (See episode one of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s TV show if you don’t believe me.) But the truth is that recycling is more important than it has ever been, with the global population at 7 billion and rising, and a growing middle class in developing countries hungry for the same consumer pleasures that richer countries’ citizens already enjoy…”